On Writing a Blog

The title is rather unceremonious, but its meaning is plain enough: I want to write about writing a blog.

I created the first version of this blog during university. Its sole purpose then was to serve as my research homepage, and I filled it with everything I could.

After graduating, I began building my own webpage templates and made a small blog much like this one, with a scrollable column at the centre and a fixed background. I had ambitions then: I meant to publish all manner of academic material and notes on language learning. Some of that will probably still appear here from time to time. What I no longer have is the desire to publish on a schedule, or to insist upon a new piece every so often. I would rather write when I wish to write; when I do not, I can think, or turn to something else.

The previous version of the blog was, in truth, rather bare. I had announced six sets of notes, each running to at least a hundred pages; in the end, I completed perhaps two. Yet after taking the entire site offline, I never quite lost the urge to publish something again—something incidental and ordinary, or perhaps a set of notes whenever the inclination returned. This version largely preserves the layout of its predecessor, though I find it considerably easier on the eye.

There is one further difference from its two predecessors: this is now an anonymous blog. I will therefore do what I can to keep real-world personal information out of these pages. Yet anonymity also seems to widen the range of what I can write: journeys, food, language learning, dreams, waking fantasies, and, for the time being last on the list, research. How much space any of these will eventually occupy remains to be seen. Memories from the past few years still linger, but I suspect they will gradually fade unless I set them down in words.

Today is August 12, 2026. In time, I will return to old photographs and gradually fill in the memories along the left of the timeline. For now, sleep. When I wake, I leave for the airport.